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The Siege of Macindaw
The Siege of Macindaw is the sixth book in the Ranger's Apprentice series by John Flanagan. Synopsis Will, your time is running out. A renegade knight has captured Castle Macindaw, poisoned the royal family and is conspiring to otherthrow the kingdom. For you, this battle is even more personal. For inside the castle someone you love is being held hostage. You are a Ranger now, and must be the hero you were trained to be. Plot An Army The Siege of Macindaw begins with Will meeting the shipwrecked Skandians from the previous book The Sorcerer of the North. At first Gundar Hardstriker (the Wolfcloud's captain) thinks him to be a ghost of some sort then realizes, to his delight, that it is really just Will, who he had become good friends with. Gundar tells Will that John Buttle, a murderer and a villian who was given to them by Will in Seacliff Fief, escaped from the ship during a storm after Gundar gave him a chance at living, murdering two Skandians in the process; Will is both saddened and angered by the news. He then asks the Skandians to help him sack Castle Macindaw, to which they agree to happily. Will leaves them to pack up their camp and follow him later. An Old Friend At the end of the fifth book, Halt, Will's former mentor and Crowley, the Ranger Commandant, had sent Horace to help. He arrives at the start of the book, traveling under the alias of Hawken, a freelance knight. He has a brief run-in with Buttle, who has become employed by Sir Keren, and after a few minutes of meager conversation he refuses the offer of work that Buttle gives to him and goes to find lodging at the local inn. There, he meets Will and they share a meal together before Will gives him an update on all the recent happenings, and then they head back to Grimsdell Forest where Will intoduces Horace to Malcolm, also known as the so-called sorcerer, Malkallam. Alyss Alyss, who is imprisoned by Sir Keren, Lord Orman's evil cousin, manages to send messages to Will using a special code system known only to the Diplomatic Corps and the Ranger Corps. Using this system Will and Alyss manage to communicate. When Malcolm hears of how Keren uses hynopsis to force Alyss to talk he asks Will to send so-called starstone called Stellatite to Alyss using his longbow and a specially adapted arrow. By touching the stone and focusing on a image in her mind (she imagines Will) Alyss manages to resist the hypnotisim with Keren being none the wiser. She discovers that Keren has made a pact with the Scotti from Picta, and a General MacHaddish is coming to visit Castle Macindaw with a few men to discuss matters with them which, at the moment, Will and the others are unaware of. MacHaddish Together, Will and Horace along with their Skandian allies manage to capture a Scotti party. Even at first their plan goes wrong and somehow MacHaddish manages to escape during the initial confusion of the fight. But, due to the fact that Will shot him in the arm, the injury slows him down enabling Will and Horace to track him down. Horace acts as a decoy, making MacHaddish believe that his pursuers had lost his track. Will sneaks up behind him but loses his element of suprise and ends up in a fight with MacHaddish, almost killed by him. Horace appears just in time and knocks him unconscious. They take him back to Malcolm, who, with the help of Trobar and a few of others among his people, scare MacHaddish out of his wits by convincing him that the woods are haunted by a feared Scotti demon called Serthrek´nish. The General tells him that an army of Scotti will soon arrive to take over Castle Macindaw with Keren's consent, thus leaving a large amount of Araluen unguarded, as Macindaw has always prevented Scotti from attacking due to its strategic position. Will immediately gets to work on coming up with a plan to attack and win back Macindaw. The Siege of Macindaw Eventually, the group manage to get Will, Horace and a few Skandians below a siege tower. They make a wheelbarrow-like machine to wheel over to the castle. It collapses, according to plan, and the Skandians pretend to run away. When the defenders, mostly bandits and murderers, believe that there are no people on the siege tower, there are fireworks and other displays on another wall. When all the focus is on that wall, Will and Horace, who had been under the tower, put ladders up onto the wall. Later, the Skandians run and manage to climb the ladder. They slaughter the defenders but Will goes up the tower carefully, to avoid defenders' attacks and get to Alyss. There, she is mesmerized by Sir Keren. Keren tells her to kill Will if he hurts Keren in any way. Will doesn't want to shoot Alyss, but he knows that he has to kill Keren. Will tells Alyss "I love you and I always have,", and the spell is broken, with Alyss breaking down emotionally in the process. After a fight between Will and Orman's cousin, Will is losing, but Alyss throws some acid that Will gave her earlier at Keren, killing him as he falls out the window of the tower room. Home Again... Later, many soldiers of Castle Norgate come to aid, but they return to the main castle, leaving the Skandians to defend. Will and Horace meet Meralon, the Ranger of Norgate, and the Battlemaster, who are among those that came, later reporting that both were slight snobs. In the next book, it is discovered that Gilan was moved up to Norgate. Will goes back to Seacliff Fief, surprisingly melancholy, but after a few days he gets a letter from Alyss that says that she loves him and leaves for Redmont to tell her that he also loves her, much to Horace's later relief. Characters In order of appearance: *Will Treaty *Tug Gallery The Siege of Macindaw (Au).jpg|First Australian Edition 1037462541.jpg RA CZ 7.jpg|Czech Cover Category:Series Category:Books Category:Ranger's Apprentice Series Category:Articles needing Improvement Category:Pages under construction